ENG-1969 — Page 30

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HONG KONG MANUFACTURING INDUSTRY IN THE SIXTIES

Thus, it came about that in 10 years during which restrictions imposed on export of cotton textiles steadily increased until the frequency with which they were mentioned in official communiques must have made it seem to many that they covered almost the whole of the industry's output, the number of factories spinning cotton yarn increased from 21 in 1959 to 34 in 1969, spindles installed from 398,000 to 804,000, people employed from 14,900 to 20,300, and output from 140 million pounds to 313 million pounds. In the same period the number of factories engaged in weaving cotton fabrics increased from 198 to 265, people employed from 21,400 to 31,700, looms installed from 12,800 to 23,300, and fabric woven from 360 million square yards to 763 million square yards. These simple figures disclose not only increased production but also increased productivity. And they conceal a change in the weaving industry from an almost universal long single shift to almost universal shorter double shift working.

Textile Finishing

What the statistics do not illustrate because of the great difficulty in quantifying output and because so much of it goes into made-up goods or garments-is the rapid and substantial increase in volume and variety and sophistication of the finishing industry, which is perhaps the most noteworthy change in the character of the cotton textile industry during the last 10 years. The magnitude of this change can be judged from the industry's employment figures-8,500 in 1969 compared with 2,700 in 1959. There has concurrently been a considerable shift away from the elaborate yarn-dyed fabrics woven to meet specialised markets of South-East Asia which were a principal product of the finishing industry of the fifties, to the piece-dyed, printed and specially finished fabrics characteristic of the sixties. This change has in turn reduced to quite a substantial extent traditional reliance on imported finished piecegoods. In keeping with the shifting pattern of the cotton textile industry, perhaps even because of it, there has been a noticeable transition towards so-called vertically integrated enterprises capable of processing raw cotton to finished cloth, even in some cases to complete garments such as shirts and work clothes.

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